Firespell (The Dark Elite 1)

It was a Saturday afternoon, and the main building was all but empty. A handful of students peppered the study hall, maybe catching up on weekend homework or trying to get ahead to pad their academic resumes. The halls that held the suites were louder, music and television spilling into the hallway as St. Sophia’s girls relaxed and enjoyed the weekend.

I unlocked the door to our suite. Scout jumped up from the couch, decked out in jeans and layered T-shirts, her hair pulled into a short ponytail, and practically knocked me over to get in a hug.

“Thank God,” she said. “The brat packers were getting almost unbearable.” She let me go, then gave me an up-and-down appraisal. “Is everything where I left it?”

“Last time I checked,” I said with a smile, then waved at Barnaby, who sat on the couch behind us. She wore a fitted pale blue T-shirt with a rainbow across the front, and her hair was up in some kind of complicated knot. It was very Sound of Music.

“Hello, Lily,” she said.

“Hi, Lesley.”

The door to Amie’s suite opened. Amie, M.K., and Veronica piled out of the room, their smiles fading as they realized I’d come home. They were all dressed in athletic shorts, snug tank tops, and sneakers. I assumed it was workout time.

Amie’s smile faded to an expression that was a lot heavier on the contrition and apology. M.K.’s smile was haughty. Veronica was using both hands to pull her hair into a ponytail. I wasn’t even on her radar.

“You were in the hospital,” M.K. said. There was no apology behind her words, no indication that she thought they might have been responsible for anything that happened to me. They weren’t, of course, responsible, but they didn’t know that. I’d hoped for something a little more contrite, honestly—maybe something in a nice “sheepish embarrassment.”

“Yep,” I said.

“What happened to you?” M.K. had apparently skipped embarrassment and gone right to being accusatory.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” I told them.

“Why? Is it catching?” M.K. snickered at her joke. “Something contagious?”

“There are certain . . . liability issues,” I said, then looked over at Amie. She was the worrywart of the group, so I figured she was my most effective target. “Insurance issues. Parental liability issues. Probably best not to talk about it. We don’t want to have to get the lawyers involved. Not yet, anyway.”

Scout, half turning so that only I could see her, winked at me.

Veronica and Amie exchanged a nervous glance.

“But thanks for the tour,” I added as I headed for my bedroom. I unlocked the door, then stood there as Scout and Barnaby skipped inside.

“It was very educational,” I said, then winked at the brat pack, walked inside, and closed the door behind us.

As dramatic exits went, it wasn’t bad.

I gave Scout and Lesley a mini- update, at least the parts I could talk about in Lesley’s company. Lesley wasn’t an Adept, at least as far as I was aware, so I kept my replay of Foley’s visit and my chat with Jason purely PG. But I shooed them out of my room pretty quickly.

I needed a shower.

A superhot, superlong, environmentally irresponsible shower. As soon as they were out the door, I changed into my reversible robe (stripes for perky days, deep blue for serious ones), grabbed my bucket o’ toiletries, and headed for the bathroom.

I spent the first few minutes with my hands against the wall, my head dunked under the spray. The heat probably didn’t do much good for my hair, but I needed it. I had basement and hospital grime to wash off, not to mention the emotional grime of (1) more of Foley’s questioning of my parents’ honesty; (2) having been unconscious and apparently near death for twelve hours; (3) having been the victim of a prank that led to point number two; and (4) having been carried out of a dangerous situation by a ridiculously pretty boy and having almost no memory of it whatsoever. That last one was just a crime against nature.

And, of course, there was the other thing.

The magic thing.

Varsity, Junior Varsity, Adepts, firespell, Reapers, enclaves. These people had their own vocabulary and apparently a pretty strong belief that they had magical powers.

Sure, I’d seen something. And whatever was going on beneath St. Sophia’s, beneath the city, I wasn’t about to rat them out. But still—what had I seen? Was it really magic? I mean—magic, as in unicorns and spells and wizards and witchcraft magic?

That, I wasn’t so sure about.

I gave it some thought as I repacked my gear and padded back to the room in my shower shoes, then waved at Scout and Lesley, who were playing cards in the common room. I gave it some thought as I scrubbed my hair dry, pulled flannel pajama bottoms from the drawer of my bureau, and got dressed again.

There was a single, quick rap at the door. I turned around to face it, but the knocking stopped, replaced by a pink packet that appeared beneath my door. I hung the damp towel on the closet doorknob, then plucked the packet from the floor. Out of an abundance of caution—I couldn’t be too sure these days—I held it up to my ear. When I was pretty sure it wasn’t ticking, I slipped a finger beneath the tab of tape that held the sides together.

And smiled.

Wrapped in the pink paper—that could only have come from Amie’s room—was the rest of the bag of licorice Scotties I’d started on before my trip to the basement. I wasn’t sure if the gift was supposed to be an apology or a bribe.

Either way, I thought, as I nipped the head from another unfortunate Scottie, I liked it.

Unfortunately, as I had realized on my way to pick up the Scotties, my knees still ached from the double falls on the limestone floor. I put my prize on the bureau, rolled up my pants legs, and moved in front of the mirror to check them out. Purple bruises bloomed on my kneecaps, evidence of my run-in with . . . well, whatever they were.

My back had cramped as I rolled the hems of my pants down. I twisted halfway around in the mirror, then tugged up the back of the Ramones T-shirt I’d paired with my flannel pajama bottoms to check out the place where the firespell had hit me. I expected to see another bruise, some indication of the force that had pushed me to the floor and knocked the breath from my lungs.

There was no bruise, at least that I could see from my position—half-turned as I was to face the mirror, one hip cocked out, neck twisted. I almost dropped the bottom of my shirt and went on my merry way—straight into bed with the coffee table’s Vogue.